One bit of feedback that I received about the Training Grounds buildings is that they don't really add value to the game, but are more of a chore to tick off while playing. I tend to agree. With the excitement of acquiring new creatures coming from the countryside rather than the town, HoMM-style individual unit training buildings don’t really make sense. I tried to compensate for this by allowing them to produce multiple units, but it wasn’t enough.

I’m going to try a different approach now, one that has a single Training Grounds building per town, which can be upgraded to allow the training of different kinds of units. To facilitate this, I’m going to introduce the concept of Equipment – items like swords, shields and armour that units use to supplement their natural fighting ability. I was going to do this anyway when adding Heroes to the design, so this looked like a good opportunity.

The Training Grounds building will be upgradeable in two ways: the level of units that it can train, and the equipment that it uses. The building will always start at level 1, and without any equipment.

Later on, I’m hoping to combine this design with artefacts and possibly other game items as well, to circumvent the need for certain resources, as well as to unlock special units.

All of the maps that I’ve designed thus far have featured towns that sprawl over seven tiles. Like this:

I designed them this way because I wanted to set them apart from all other map buildings in terms of size. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to use the surrounding tiles for. Now I think I’ve figured it out – I’ll use them as slots for town buildings, meaning that each town will be able to accommodate exactly six buildings in addition to the townsfolk dwelling that it starts with. This means that each building will essentially represent a building type, and perform all of the functions associated with that type.

My first tentative list of buildings is:
• Training grounds – trains creatures and their associated items into units
• Bestiary – produces new creatures from available ones
• Armoury/Workshop – produces equipment and war machines
• Mage guild – researches spells
• Treasury – produces resources
• Forge – forges artefacts
• Apothecary – produces consumables (potions, ammunition)
This is more buildings than I have space for, so I’ll have to eliminate one of them as I refine the design.

This goes hand-in-hand with the most recent design of the Homestead and Barbarian Training Grounds building that I’ve posted. Now I’ll just have to design the remaining buildings along similar lines.

On the subject of ruins, it occurred to me today that we can do better than have map structures that are deserted at the start and that players can populate during the course of the game. An alternative would be to combine ruins with the likes of treasure troves from HoMM. This would yield dual-purpose structures - they initially provide some kind of bonus (spell, artefact), and after they are cleared out, they can serve as a home to creatures that the player chooses to settle there.

For example, have a shrine that gives the visiting player a random level 2 spell. Once the spell has been claimed, the shrine can serve as a potential dwelling for level 2 magical creatures that can be populated by the player. Or have a forge that produces a random level 3 artefact. After taking the artefact, the player can populate the forge with any creatures made from fire or magma.